Harris John M, Novalis-Marine Cheryl, Harris Robin B
College of Medicine, Arizona Health Sciences Center, Medical Directions, Inc., Tucson, Arizona, USA.
J Contin Educ Health Prof. 2003 Fall;23(4):221-8. doi: 10.1002/chp.1340230505.
On-line continuing medical education (CME) provides advantages to physicians and to medical educators. Although practicing physicians increasingly use on-line CME to meet their educational needs, the overall use of on-line CME remains limited. There are few data to describe the physicians who use this new educational medium; yet, they clearly are the innovators and early adopters who will facilitate the growth of this educational technology. It would be useful to instructional designers and CME developers to better understand the characteristics of this influential group.
We studied the actual use of several different on-line CME programs within three different groups of physicians. The on-line programs were developed as part of research studies funded by the National Institutes of Health, with no relationship to commercial interests. They were presented to physicians using mass mailouts (two physician groups) or personal contact and were accompanied by incentives to reduce resistance to the new technology. We compared the characteristics of physicians who chose to use these on-line programs with demographic data from larger populations representing the groups from which these users originated.
We found that physicians who used these on-line CME programs were younger than average and, importantly, more likely to be female than expected. This finding was consistent across different types of physician populations and different types of CME programs.
Based on data reflecting actual use of on-line CME, younger physicians appear to be adopting on-line CME more rapidly than others, and women physicians appear to be adopting on-line CME at a faster rate than their male counterparts. This latter finding conflicts with the impression provided by some survey-based studies that male physicians are more likely than female physicians to use on-line CME. The data suggest that the growth of on-line CME is most likely occurring in diffusion networks dominated by relatively new medical school graduates and, possibly, women physicians. These results provide valuable insight to those who seek to develop and market on-line CME and those who seek to reach women physicians with CME programs.
在线继续医学教育（CME）为医生和医学教育工作者带来了诸多优势。尽管执业医生越来越多地利用在线继续医学教育来满足他们的教育需求，但在线继续医学教育的总体使用仍然有限。描述使用这种新教育媒介的医生的数据很少；然而，他们显然是将推动这种教育技术发展的创新者和早期采用者。对于教学设计人员和继续医学教育开发者来说，更好地了解这个有影响力的群体的特征将是有益的。
我们研究了三组不同医生对几种不同在线继续医学教育项目的实际使用情况。这些在线项目是作为由美国国立卫生研究院资助的研究的一部分开发的，与商业利益无关。它们通过大规模邮寄（两组医生）或个人联系的方式呈现给医生，并伴有激励措施以减少对新技术的抵触情绪。我们将选择使用这些在线项目的医生的特征与来自代表这些用户来源群体的更大人群的人口统计数据进行了比较。
我们发现使用这些在线继续医学教育项目的医生比平均年龄年轻，重要的是，女性比例比预期的更高。这一发现适用于不同类型的医生群体和不同类型的继续医学教育项目。
基于反映在线继续医学教育实际使用情况的数据，年轻医生似乎比其他医生更快地采用在线继续医学教育，而女医生采用在线继续医学教育的速度似乎比男医生更快。后一个发现与一些基于调查的研究所提供的印象相矛盾，即男医生比女医生更有可能使用在线继续医学教育。数据表明，在线继续医学教育的增长最有可能发生在以相对较新的医学院毕业生以及可能的女医生为主导的传播网络中。这些结果为那些寻求开发和推广在线继续医学教育的人以及那些寻求通过继续医学教育项目接触女医生的人提供了有价值的见解。
